He was handing out Thanksgiving food baskets for St. Andrew Catholic several years back when he rang the bell of a decrepit shack in Northeast Portland. When the door opened, Mike DesCamp was met by a sullen woman, dirt-caked children and the cold stench of the house, and he couldn't get off the porch fast enough.

As he handed the woman the basket, she looked him in the eye and said, "Where have you been the rest of the year?"

So, yes, guilt enters into it. DesCamp is 65, a former Navy pilot who flew A-3 Skywarriors and racked up 75 carrier landings in Vietnam. He's lived in town since 1970, most recently on Hayden Island, and he's never seen so many of the homeless on the street.

Last September, he finally began speaking to them.

"There's not really any hierarchy but we do look out for each other. Some people call me Captain Save-a-Ho because I look out for some of the women on the streets ... I'm not interested in them sexually, but a couple of them are friends. I make it a rule to not get involved with someone who weighs more than me or has a better mustache."

The first guy, Frisco, was selling Street Roots outside the Grand Central Bakery on Northeast Weidler. He looked approachable, so DesCamp offered him $10 for a half hour of conversation. "What he told me," DesCamp says, "completely changed my feeling about what's happening on the street."

"I was homeless in Tacoma for a short time and left as soon as I could ... The police have a really lousy trick they pull up there. It's like this: If you slow down at an intersection to give something to a homeless person, the police will arrest you for obstructing traffic or something. Pretty soon people learn it's not a good idea to try to help ... That's why I came to Portland -- Tacoma is just mean."

Why is he not only talking to the homeless but transcribing the interviews and sending them to me?

He didn't like the way he felt when he pulled up beside a guy with a sign on a freeway overpass, each too embarrassed to look at the other. "This is the hardest thing I've ever done," DesCamp wrote to his son not long ago, "because I'm forcing myself to confront a reality I'd rather ignore."

"She's had a really bad cough for a while, and I finally took her to Kaiser. They found she had bronchitis ... I know she got sick because of our living arrangements. We have a tent pitched in the woods near one of the MAX line stops and it's really cold and wet up there. We have to break camp each day and roll up everything and hide it in the woods, otherwise someone might find the camp and rip us off or just break things up."

He's figured some things out. In Portland, food isn't the problem. The problem is getting to Sisters of the Road or Blanchet House, and knowing you'll lose your spot and the castoffs from the lunch-time crowd. The problem is a place to sleep and a place to pee. The problem is keeping yourself and that ratty sleeping bag dry once the rain rolls in.

The problem is not having a place where you belong. That's why that regular space on the off-ramp or the street corner is such a big deal. That's why they'll fight to keep it.

"I met my wife at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting and we got married about two years ago, so we help to keep each other straight ... It's really hard to stay clean and sober when you're in this situation. There's no hope for anything to change and sometimes it's a lot easier to just give up and do some dope or get numb with booze."

DesCamp often hands out baggies containing energy bars, extra socks and "Emergency Essential" ponchos and blankets, which arrive in small plastic pouches that weigh about six ounces each.

But he also slips the homeless bills and spare change. Doesn't he realize (I know you're thinking) these bums might spend it in all the wrong places?

Of course. "But if I give something to someone, my hold on that gift ends when it passes out of my hand," he says. "They may buy drugs. But they may buy a hamburger now that it's down to a buck at McDonald's. When you give something, you can't attach strings to it."

"Most of the guys, and women too, who are holding up the signs? They're not the ones who need help the most. The ones who really need it aren't going to ask for it ... and they're sure not going to talk to you. They're the guys you see wandering along the sidewalk, talking to themselves or just staring."

Over coffee, we compare biases, fears and social theories. How do you know the guy with the sign is really living on the street? What about the argument that you're not really helping the homeless when you give them money?

"I don't want it to become that complicated," DesCamp says. "I want it to be that I'll see someone on a corner and give them something and that's the end of it. I'll know that person is better off than before I came along.

"A lot of your preconceptions are right. But that doesn't absolve us ..." He pauses. "Well, it doesn't absolve me."

"Anything else I should know?"

"Yeah, really. This may not sound like a problem, but I think the idea of giving anonymously gets in the way of things changing. People talk about being anonymous with their charity, making sure no one knows that they've made some donation or other. But I don't really think that's being modest or Christian. For a lot of people, it's really a way to keep us at arm's length, because talking to us or acknowledging us is way too embarrassing or painful.